With gun violence on the rise across the country, the trauma extends beyond those struck by bullets to entire neighborhoods suffering from sounds of gunshots, according to mental health experts and a crime prevention company executive.
Many inner cities have collaborated with a company called ShotSpotter, which uses acoustic gunshot technology that listens for the telltale sounds of gunfire. It then triangulates a source and alerts police departments within 45 seconds of the trigger being pulled.
ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas that the technology is helping police zero in on shooters. However, Clark explains, “Just because someone doesn’t get hurt or killed by a bullet, just going to bed to the sound of gunfire, waking up to the sound of gunfire…a neighborhood that has being held captive by a few criminal serial shooters completely rewires the way, especially in young children, how their brain works.”
Dr. Eraina Schauss, director of the BRAIN Center at the University of Memphis, agrees. “There’s that feeling when you feel like there’s no control in your environment…and things feel hopeless. You know that something that we perpetuate that cycle of violence, just because it’s all driven by fear, it’s a fear reaction.”
New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea told ABC News that his city saw a 73% increase in shootings in May 2021 when compared to the same time last year. “The real cost is…the emotional trauma and the mother that lives on that block and now won’t send our kids outside because she knows every night there’s gunfire,” he said.
Clark explained that in 2020, ShotSpotter sent 240,000 gunshot alerts to police departments around the country, calling it another tool in the police arsenal to try to curb gun crime.